Deep into the night, Ning Qing’s illness grew worse.
He always felt that his secondary differentiation was essentially a sudden disease one that left him weak, sensitive, and easily stirred with emotion. He believed he would be far better off without that organ altogether. Could there truly be any pleasure in exposing one’s most vulnerable place and enduring another’s dominance?
Yet today, for the very first time, he felt the vivid reality of what they called the bliss of union.
Ning Qing accepted Cyril’s second temporary mark on this utterly unfamiliar bed. In the pitch darkness, only a hazy sliver of moonlight illuminated the contours of his jaw and neck. Cyril bit even deeper this time, but Ning Qing bit down on his lower lip and didn’t make a sound.
His body had grown accustomed to it, submissive, even. The injected pheromones acted like an addictive drug, driving his body to secrete pleasure inducing biochemicals that soothed, altered, and intoxicated him.
After finishing the mark, Cyril simply gave him a remarkably pure embrace, doing nothing more.
“Do you feel a little better, Senior?”
Much better. At least his rationality had returned.
As his memories rushed back, Ning Qing finally recalled that he was the one who had piled the blankets into a nest, crawled inside, and softly called out Cyril’s name while habitually rubbing his thighs together. He had even nuzzled into Cyril’s palm when the younger man reached in to check his temperature.
Hormones were truly a curse.
Still, he would never admit it. He had just lost his temper not long ago, and his unyielding stubbornness meant he wouldn’t be the first to yield.
Ning Qing said raspy voiced, “Is that so? I didn’t…”
Feel good at all.
And, of course, he hadn’t forgiven Cyril either.
With the mark successfully placed, an invisible chain bound him to Cyril. How much had Cyril figured out, and how would he handle what came next? Everything left Ning Qing deeply unsettled.
The tournament, their genders, and the nature of their relationship. Ning Qing didn’t even know where to begin.
It was Cyril who broke the awkward silence. He turned on the lights and looked around the room. “This is where I lived until I was ten. I still come here occasionally to sit quietly, so my pheromones are left behind.”
Omegas feeling insecure in areas with high pheromone concentrations might display nesting behaviors, that was a theory Ning Qing had read in an academic paper.
Ning Qing said coldly, “So, did you arrange for me to stay here on purpose, Cyril?”
“You misunderstand, Senior. It’s simply because this room is the furthest from my parents’ quarters. It wouldn’t be good if we argued too loudly and drew their attention.”
When Cyril smiled, he actually bore a striking resemblance to his mother, a flawless, perfectly practiced smile that felt eerily unsettling.
He opened a carved wooden cabinet, pulled out a jar of honey, and mixed a glass of warm honey water for Ning Qing. The castle like manor was so vintage that it lacked even domestic robots, requiring the hosts to do everything by hand.
Cyril’s eyes flicked toward the damp bedsheets. “You’ve lost a lot of fluid, Senior. You should drink some water. I remember you like sweet things.”
Ning Qing didn’t take the offer.
The glass of honey water sat on the nightstand until the honey settled at the bottom, right up until Cyril picked it up and drank it all himself.
“Well, it seems I put a bit too much sugar in it. It makes sense you didn’t want it.” Cyril let out a deeply troubled smile. “However, just like this botched glass of honey water, I’ve never really understood how to make people happy since the day I was born. I have a congenital brain condition and spent many years bedridden, constantly seeing family doctors in this very room.”
Buzz…
When he pressed a hidden button on the cabinet, a complete set of restraint devices suddenly popped out from the headboard and the wall. Cyril then crouched down, meeting Ning Qing at eye level. He wrapped one end of a restraint strap around his own wrist and extended the other end toward Ning Qing.
It was as if he were inviting Ning Qing to tame him.
“Just like this, if I ever disobeyed my parents’ wishes, I would be locked in this room and unable to go anywhere.”
“You probably wonder why my temper fluctuates so drastically. Sometimes I can’t control it myself. If I’ve offended you, could you ever forgive me?”
“That’s not the issue.”
The leather strap slithered into his palm like a snake. Even though it posed no actual threat, Ning Qing unconsciously held his breath, his heart racing, a purely physiological stress response.
“The important thing is… you don’t respect me, Cyril. I believe I’ve told you this before. Your parents certainly don’t treat me as an equal, but you are just as arrogant.”
“How are you any different from Benson?”
Yet, during Cyril’s trip down memory lane, Ning Qing had already gathered himself. He took out the trench coat he had worn before going to the tailor shop from his suitcase, completely concealing the revealing “formal attire” he wore underneath.
Dawn was approaching. Outside the window, a quiet, misty blue enveloped the world, serene and hazy, followed by the faint chirping of birds.
On his comms device, he received a reply from the underground doctor he had messaged earlier. The doctor had sent ten question marks followed by a voice call. Ning Qing declined it before the ringtone could sound and simply sent his coordinates.
Cyril had been busy mixing the honey water at the time and hadn’t noticed.
He did have friends after all. There was no need to hang himself on Cyril’s potentially poisonous tree.
Calculating the time, Ning Qing said, “Our agreement can end early. Let me go, Cyril.”
“Also, thank you for the flowers. I hope you find a suitable partner soon.”
To be fair, he couldn’t quite empathize with Cyril’s childhood trauma. The room was quite spacious, and if it was truly meant for medical treatment, his parents’ actions weren’t entirely unforgivable.
Though his appearance and attire remained impeccably neat, Cyril visibly slumped into a state of dejection.
Ning Qing expected Cyril to accuse him of breaking his word or forcefully try to make him stay.
In the end, all he received was a parting piece of advice.
“Senior, the Emperor will pass away soon. Capital Planet and the entire Empire will fall into chaos. I hope you… take good care of yourself.”
The sun rose as usual.
Before leaving, Ning Qing looked back one last time at the ancient manor shrouded in the morning mist. It was surrounded by an endless expanse of dark forest, starkly different from the crowded chaos of the lower districts.
He chose not to borrow Cyril’s shuttle, bringing it back would be too much trouble, and seeing him again would only be awkward.
Under a weak signal, Ning Qing followed the navigation along an overgrown, dilapidated path. It turned out that Capital Planet, a place where countless outsiders fought desperately just to put down roots and where every inch of land was worth gold, also possessed such vast, undeveloped areas.
It reminded Ning Qing of his hometown. Planet 703, a desolate planet that had only recently been settled by pioneer teams.
“The Empire says that since residents are settling here, we need to give it a name. How about Grass Planet?”
Planet 703 was covered in wild grass that the milk producing beasts loved to eat, making it ideal for grazing.
“That name lacks so much class! It doesn’t sound grand at all. Little Ning Qing, you choose one.”
One-year-old Ning Qing had been lifted onto the long table in the small wooden cabin, crawling and reaching through the messy piles of paper slips.
Even as a baby with porcelain white skin, he had displayed extraordinary intelligence, quiet, untroubled, almost as if he truly understood the adults despite not being able to speak yet.
He picked and chose before finally wrapping his tiny hands around a single item.
The crest of the pioneer team.
His mother picked him up and gave him two big kisses. “Little Ning Qing is so smart! The Seventh Star Zone was carved out by our commoner pioneer team. This place is the heart of the Seventh Star Zone, so let’s call it Pioneer Planet.”
That was Ning Qing’s one-year-old commemorative video. There was one for every year after, two, three, four… until they abruptly stopped at age ten.
So how could he not hate them?
Perhaps out of a secret hope, he desperately wished Cyril had nothing to do with it.
Before he even made it out of the forest, the comms signal died completely. Ning Qing navigated by tracking the shadow of the sun, walking for about three hours before finally spotting a relatively flat riverbank.
He also spotted guard posts spaced every hundred meters apart. His opportunistic friend, the underground doctor Egger, was currently kneeling by the river with his hands up, held at gunpoint by a sentry wielding an electromagnetic pulse rifle.
Ning Qing pulled out the Lanchester family token to bail him out.
Egger rubbed his sore lower back and massaged his legs, complaining miserably, “Ouch! I’ve been looking for you forever! I almost got shot dead out here!”
A wave of guilt hit Ning Qing. After all, he was the one who had dragged the innocent Egger into this. As soon as they were out of the guards’ line of sight, he offered an apology. “I’m sorry, Egger. I dragged you into this. What kind of compensation do you want?”
Egger instantly sprang back to life, his back no longer aching and his legs no longer sore. “You’ll have to pay extra! You need to pay ten times my standard rate for lost work!”
Ning Qing actually considered it seriously. “Is 200,000 Imperial Credits enough?”
Egger stared. “I was just joking! Are you really going to give me your entire life savings? Let’s just stick to the old rules.”
Their “comradely friendship” was largely built on Ning Qing acting as Egger’s laboratory guinea pig.
Without a Capital Planet citizenship ID, Ning Qing could only seek treatment at black clinics when he fell ill. As a dropout from a top medical academy, Egger’s medical skills were unquestionable, he just had a habit of extorting money with exorbitant prices.
That was until he discovered Ning Qing was a Beta with extraordinarily high mental strength, making him a prime research case. Later, when Ning Qing differentiated a second time into an Omega, his research value skyrocketed even further. And now…
Egger gasped sharply. “My friend… we haven’t seen each other for just a little while, how did you get marked this intensely?!”
It looked as though he had been thoroughly ravaged by ten top-tier Alphas for three days and three nights straight.
“Is it that bad? I feel fine,” Ning Qing replied, touching the back of his neck with the back of his hand. His gland was indeed a bit swollen and hot, but it had calmed down significantly compared to last night.
Upon returning to the black clinic at the harbor docks, he calmly recounted everything that had happened since the finals, his contract with Cyril and how his body was becoming increasingly prone to arousal.
With every sentence he uttered, Egger’s face turned a shade greener.
“Stop, stop, stop! Don’t you realize you’re being taken advantage of?”
Ning Qing looked lost in thought.
He wrapped a braid around his pinky finger, pondering slowly. “Perhaps… but if I didn’t do it, I would have lost my qualification to compete.”
Egger: ?
Ning Qing, however, didn’t seem to care. “At least I don’t regret it yet. Let’s talk about the gland removal surgery first. Can we schedule it for half a month from now? I should be done with the league by then.”
“I really don’t understand you. Is competing in that stupid tournament really that important? It’s not like you’re guaranteed to win, and who knows if the Expeditionary Force would even accept a Beta anyway.”
“I won’t know unless I try. I want to give it everything I’ve got.”
Ning Qing gazed out the porthole. Several starships thundered past the dock adjacent to the clinic, the sonic shockwaves fluttering the tips of his hair.
Perhaps the Empire was truly about to change.
The Lanchester Estate.
The Grand Marshal snuffed out an unlit cigar. The Marshal’s wife leaned quietly and submissively against her husband’s shoulder, looking like a soul bereft shell of a person.
The Marshal didn’t turn around to look at his eldest son, who had been standing silently for a long time. “Cyril, you can’t even keep an Omega under control. How can I trust you with my seat in the Council?”
Cyril lowered his head, pressing his right hand against his chest in a bow. “Rest assured, Father. I have made up my mind. I will never make another mistake again.”